Photograph by Kiyoshi Sakamoto, National Geographic Stock

December 2011

SHADY LADIES

Two carefully coiffed friends brave the sea—and one, without parasol, the sun—at a Japanese beach in the 1920s. They may have been geishas. The nape-revealing dip of their collars was considered quite alluring for the time, but the pair here show something even more shocking: The red skirts extending beneath their kimonos are actually their underwear. It could be that no man noticed their daring but Kiyoshi Sakamoto, our photographer. According to a 1922 Japanese government document, out of 216 bathing beaches in Japan, 41 segregated male and female swimmers.
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Ralph Stock, National Geographic Stock

November 2011

PEARL STRIVERS

A car's old gas tank and some garden hose compose a homemade helmet for this Mississippi River pearl diver. Notes with the photo claim the apparatus enabled the man to "go down 70 feet, and remain down one and a half hours." He would have needed that much time to find anything. When this photo was taken in 1938, the Mississippi's population of pearly mussels had already been largely depleted for use by button factories. For them, the mussels' shells proved more valuable than the gem sometimes inside. One bivalve could yield 24 buttons punched from its halves—and some six billion buttons were produced in the U.S. in 1916 alone. Though most pearl-button factories did not survive the 1940s rage for plastic buttons (not to mention zippers), the end of the harvests did not bring the Mississippi's mussels numbers back. Dozens of its species are now classified as endangered or threatened. Some might say they're as rare as pearls.
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by New York Daily News, National Geographic Stock

October 2011

POURING IT ON

Young Walter Volk dumps a refreshing bucket of water over construction worker Louis Adesso, here taking a break on an East 41st Street stoop in Manhattan in August 1947. The steamy weather continued well into the fall. The Octobers of 1947 and 2007 tie as New York City's warmest to date. But the heat wave eventually broke: The year 1947 also brought one of New York's snowiest winters. Some 25 inches fell on December 27—a record for that day that still stands.
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by British Combine, Fox Photos, National Geographic Stock

September 2011

HEN PARTY

Recruits of the Women's Land Army take poultry care in stride while training in Northamptonshire, England, in 1940. During World War II "land girls" from all over Britain were asked (and eventually conscripted) to work on farms as replacements for men who'd left to fight. By 1944 around 80,000 women had been enlisted to grow the country's food. In recent years the U.K.'s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has recognized more than 34,000 former land girls for their wartime service. Some of these honorees—a long way from the farm—even had tea with the Queen.
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Volkmar Wentzel, National Geographic Stock

August 2011

LIP SERVICE

A trusting visitor gets her lipstick touched up via the robotic arm exhibit at the American Museum of Atomic Energy in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (now the American Museum of Science and Energy, where a smaller version of the exhibit is still on display). The same kind of device was also employed by atomic scientists at the nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory to handle radioactive materials.

This photo was likely taken for—though not published in—the Geographic's January 1954 story "Man's New Servant, the Friendly Atom." Using a mechanical hand, notes one caption in that article, a "scientist can even turn a screwdriver or write her name. Mechanical limbs reproduce her movements exactly."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Asahel Curtis, National Geographic Stock

July 2011

STALK KING

Alaskans may grow little produce, but some of that little grows big. The long days of summer sunlight there help some rhubarb plants—the first of which were likely introduced to the region by Russian traders in the 1700s—reach heights of five feet or more.

In the early 20th century Henry Clark (above, in 1921) of Skagway, Alaska, was known as the Rhubarb King for his monster crop. Rhubarb stalks (and only stalks—the leaves and roots are toxic) like his provided vitamins, fiber, and flavor to Klondike gold rush hopefuls who had few other options for fresh produce that far north. Today descendants of Clark's rhubarbs still thrive for Skagway resident Charlotte Jewell, who runs a garden business on the site of his old farm. "Our town became famous for its rhubarb," she says, "and Henry Clark started it all."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Mary G. Lucas, National Geographic Stock

June 2011

A SMALL WEDDING

Upper-class Korean children pose for a wedding portrait in this 1916 photo, an image perhaps acquired for—but not published in—the July 1919 Geographic article "Exploring Unknown Corners of the 'Hermit Kingdom.' " This bride and groom, ages 10 and 12 respectively, were likely married only ceremonially, living in separate quarters of the boy's home until their elders decided otherwise. Among the aristocracy, such child marriages were arranged to strengthen ties between families.

Though the children are shown in traditional headwear for Korean brides and grooms, they do not wear wedding clothing. Notes Yeon Ji Hwang of the Korean Consulate's Cultural Service, traditional ceremonial clothes "would be much too big for the couple to wear."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by H. Goetz, National Geographic Stock

May 2011

THREE CAPS

Ladies of southern Silesia—a region that was part of German Prussia when this photo was acquired in 1926, though it is now located in Poland—model caps that marked a woman's marital and social status. Made of silk, the elaborately decorated bonnets and their wide, trailing ribbons were often worked with gold and silver threads, sequins, and glass beads. But fashions fade. Noted the inscription on the back of this photograph: "These beautiful Silesian caps are no longer seen except on very old women."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Three Lions, National Geographic Stock

April 2011

SMOOTHING THE WAY

The rock face of the formation known as the Rodadero takes a treatment from local Quechua people in April 1941. Across a field from the famed Inca fortress of Sacsahuamán, the undulating diorite slope has been smoothed more by time and its geology than by humans. Yet today tourists visiting the site overlooking Cusco, Peru, continue to buff the steep stone—with their backsides. The Rodadero makes a natural slide.
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by H. A. Atwell Studio, National Geographic Stock

March 2011

TRUNK ROCKER

"Such a swing would thrill the most blasé," claimed the caption for this photograph—which left the swinger unidentified—from "The Land of Sawdust and Spangles," the story on circuses published in the October 1931 National Geographic. Author Francis Beverly Kelley did not take such performances lightly. "There's no such thing as a tamed wild animal," he wrote. "You can train them, but you never can be certain that they are tamed. Trainers who have trusted their jungle charges too far have been left behind in a horizontal position while the long show trains thundered away to the next town."
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by Acme Newspictures Inc., National Geographic Stock

February 2011

FEATHERS IN HER CAP

Stylish Mae Vavrea tops off her turban with a black-tailed white Japanese bantam rooster at the Chicago Poultry and Pet Show in 1926. Though not published in the story, this photo was probably acquired for the Geographic's April 1927 article "America's Debt to the Hen." In it author Harry R. Lewis notes, "For untold centuries the hen has been a companion of man in the onward march of civilization…The hen might be termed a universal favorite, in that a greater number of persons are interested and actually concerned with poultry than with any other form of live stock." No mention was made of the bird, however, as headgear.
— Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photograph by W. E. Grubl, National Geographic Stock

January 2011

THE BIG DIP

Every 12 years or so—according to the local astrological calendar—hundreds of thousands of people flock to the town of Kumbakonam, in India's Tamil Nadu state, to wash away their sins. They seek a soaking in the Mahamaham tank, a 6.2-acre step-sided pool said to contain waters from many of India's most sacred rivers. "Bathing is intimately connected with the religious life of the Hindu," noted the caption to this photo in the December 1913 National Geographic. "The picture shows the great tank filled with pilgrims waiting for the auspicious moment to bathe." The next Mahamaham festival is scheduled for 2016.
— Margaret G. Zackowitz